Give It To Me

As a kid, I didn't know any more about blues artists than I did the dangers of a Pinto gas tank. I remember the Stones' album cover of Out Of Our Heads as much as I remember one brother continually picking up the tone-arm and dropping it back down on Satisfaction. But being an 8 year old, in all fairness, I did not pick up on who influenced the band.
Moving ahead a year or 2 into the seventies, thanks to my banjo picking other brother, I was pretty well steeped in the whole folky, singer/songwriter heyday. Until my buddy Jacques turned me onto Full House from The J Geils Band. From that time on, I remember a distinct line being drawn from mild, clumsy, over-the-shirt make out parties to Budweiser fueled, look at the white boy dance style hoe downs.
Dang, I'd never heard Chuck Berry licks come from a harp player before. Hell, who was Chuck Berry?
By this time, I was able to surmise that, while the Beatles and the Stones were from diverging planets, the Stones and the J Geils band were first cousins once removed. They just took different streets away from home. One went juke-joint-house party shuffle and the other went
drunkin' gospel swing.

Photo From bbc.co.uk

A-Wop-Bam-Boom

It's tiresome being a boomer. It must be as tiresome reading about it. I mean you've got throwback this, vintage that and retro yadda-yadda-yadda. Even the whole yadda thing is...
So I'm walking into Schuler Books, you know, the one off Alpine, and I pass a small table display of some newly re-mastered Beatles CDs. Try as I might to ignore, I spot Rubber Soul and Revolver, my two favorites, but manage to keep right on walking. Moments later I flee the premises with a birthday card and a freshly plucked copy of Rubber Soul. We head up the highway northbound to Rosie's party, eagerly tearing the packaging off the CD with a giddy wave of nostalgia washing over us (how boomersian).
I gotta say, as much as these tunes come from my favorite Beatles era, along with Revolver and singles Day Tripper and Paperback Writer, I'll continue to look more intensley for a turntable and receiver and the arguably more favored mono mix. I don't care for all the seperation and clarity. I don't like my Beatles enhanced. I like my Beatles dirty.
What IS kinda cool though, and this coming from a neophyte, is trying to pin-point the influences, which are clearly more pronounced here. Harrison's Byrdsy Rick...things along with a pound or two of Buck Owens. McCartney's channeling of Little Richard and James Brown. Lennon, (I got nuthin) and Ringo's steady, economic style which must have come from people other than himself.

Photo of George Harrison lifted from nerdboyfriend.com